


Failure

by AreYouReady



Series: It Wasn't Me (I Wasn't There) [2]
Category: Death Note
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Closeted Character, F/M, L Is A Very Jealous Ex, Light POV, Light Thinks He's Going Mad, Loveless Marriage, M/M, Mind Games, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Stalking, Stillbirth, hidden messages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 21:04:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4277838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AreYouReady/pseuds/AreYouReady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Light tries not to let his marriage fall apart, but that's hard when everything is going wrong and he's falling apart himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Failure

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by put-that-damn-spirit-portal-out on tumblr.  
> Confusingly, this takes place before Cuckold, chronologically speaking. I suggest you read both, as they provide good context to each other.

Light sometimes hated how he could string patterns together. He hated that even though he knew it couldn’t be true, that it was probably meant for someone else, that it might be accidental, he still got a tiny thrill every time he found one of His coded messages. Because Light, even at the tender age of twenty eight, was rapidly rising to the elite of the NPA with his _expert_ profiling skills, so he ended up working on cases that involved Him more and more. And there were always little tidbits hidden somewhere, be it a cypher encoded in the page numbers of autopsy reports, or a simple skip code in the documents that contained His opinion on the case.

The messages were generally short, and their content ranged from romantic ( _I only wish for your beauty to shine upon me again_ ) to obscene ( _I could still suck you like a banana_ ) to mildly creepy but so honestly Him that Light didn’t care ( _I want to get inside your head and unravel you until every thread of your being is mine to know_ ). Although one time, Light had to delegate the reading of certain document to someone else, because the first page spelled out, in acrostic, “K I L L K I Y O M I.”

Light sometimes wondered if he should feel guilty, spending all this time looking for hidden messages that weren’t there (oh, but they were, they _were_ ), or at least weren’t for him (but he could pretend oh, he could _pretend_ ), but he generally rationalized the feeling away. He was the best, after all; most of his time was spent waiting for the dimwits he worked with to catch up. So what if he was spending most of his time deciphering coded messages – coded messages that weren’t there, weren’t for him, this was impossible, He abandoned me – from an old flame. He still got more done than most of the people he worked with put together.

Besides, five seconds of fantasy was better than 24/7 of bitter reality.

-

Kiyomi was pregnant. Kiyomi was _pregnant._ Kiyomi was pregnant, and for the first time since he’d bought the ring, Light didn’t feel like their marriage was a sham. Because wasn’t that why all human cultures had some variant of marriage? Not because it was romantic, but to control breeding? To keep a couple together long enough to raise a child? What did it matter _now_ that he had no true romantic feelings toward his wife? They had done their duty. Kiyomi was pregnant.

When she had come to him with the positive pregnancy test, she had been slightly panicked. While they had discussed that perhaps children _might_ be a good idea, it was in a fairly nebulous, sometime-down-the-road way.

Light had also been worried. He’d been married to Kiyomi for only two years, and while it was going as well as it could have – better, somewhat, than he had projected – he’d wanted to be absolutely sure of their stability. But then he’d thought it through, and he’d realized: a child _was_ their stability. He was twenty nine years old, and would be a father by the time he was thirty. It was perfect. He realized he should be _ecstatic._

And he was. Over the next few weeks, Light glowed so visibly that an outside observer might’ve thought _he_ was the pregnant one. While he found this a bit embarrassing, as it showed something of a lack of control on his part, he couldn’t quite make himself feel bad about it, because the happiness that came from _everything coming together exactly how it was supposed to_ was simply too strong. Even though he was in a relationship based on lies, even though his feelings for Kiyomi were absolutely false, his paternal love for his own offspring would be absolutely _real_. He could be a normal father, he wouldn’t even have to pretend.

-

Kiyomi lost the baby at three months. She cried and grieved demurely and properly for the exact amount of time that it was acceptable, and even though he was angry, with God, with the universe, with Kiyomi and her failure of a uterus, this reminded him why he liked her as a person. Why, even though he felt no urge to kiss her, touch her, fuck her, understand her, he found it tolerable to pretend he did.

But Kiyomi had grown attached to the idea of motherhood. Despite her initial misgivings, she’d begun to obsessively look up baby names and imagine designs for the nursery. Of course, they couldn’t actually start construction until they knew the gender of the baby, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared. So when he suggested trying again, she was quite receptive.

-

It took them two years and three more miscarriages before Kiyomi made it into the second trimester. Her obstetrician assured them that they should be safe, that the most dangerous part was over, and Light breathed a sigh of relief. The difficulties they’d had were starting to create enough of a rift between them that Light was growing worried. But now all was well. They could be a normal middle class family. Perfectly normal.

That was when Light started to imagine things. _Imagining,_ that’s what it had to be, he was sure. Every time he turned around, he would see a flicker of pale skin and long, tousled black hair out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t understand why that sort of thing would start now, when he was finally happy. When he could finally start living a normal life for real.

But they followed him in crowds. He was sure of it. Once he managed to shake one, another would appear. He started looking behind him even in his own home, paranoid. Of course, he didn’t see them there, but the unease he felt in public tailed him everywhere. It got to the point where he began to have trouble hiding it, and Kiyomi started to notice.

“Light?” she said one night, after he’d jumped slightly when she’d put her hand across his shoulders, “Is there something wrong? You’ve been so… unsettled, lately.”

“It’s nothing, Kiyomi,” Light answered, rolling out the lie he’d prepared for this exact contingency, “I’m just working on a… particularly disturbing case. You shouldn’t worry about it.” He smiled and stroked a hand over her swelling stomach. “You have our child to look after.”

Kiyomi accepted his response, though he saw a tinge of suspicion in her gaze that he’d never seen before. It was worrying.

-

Light _hated_ drinking. He hated the taste of alcohol, he hated the feeling of being drunk, he hated the fear that he would do something embarrassing while impaired. But the trouble with society was, most traditional social rituals involved copious amounts of booze, and Light wasn’t about to _refuse_ a morale boosting night out at the bar with the team. He couldn’t opt out of bonding activities; he was already a specialist, which made him something of an outsider. Plus, they had just finished a case, and needed a little celebration.

Unfortunately, because Light hated drinking, he rarely engaged in it, and with no built up tolerance for alcohol, he was something of, well, a _light_ weight. And since he’d done, if he was quite honest, most of the work in solving this case, everyone wanted to buy him a drink. It really didn’t take long for him to begin feeling the effects.

Which was why, later, when he looked back on the events of the night, he was absolutely sure that what happened next was a warped projection of his intoxicated mind.

“Hey, Sugar,” came a woman’s voice from behind him as he watched Matsuda and Ide argue about whether or not Matsuda attempting to balance his beer glass on his head was a good idea. He turned, already holding up his left hand to point out his wedding ring, but froze when he actually saw the woman in question.

Chin length black hair in such impressive disarray that it looked purposely styled. Large, dark eyes. Skin pale enough to mark her as a foreigner, even if the words she’d spoken to him _hadn’t_ carried a slight English accent. A large, beaky nose. A long sleeved white shirt. Pale jeans that weren’t baggy _per se,_ but not skinny enough to be fashionable.

Light dropped his glass.

As he apologized and stepped out of the way of the bartender, who had brought out a broom and a mop, he lost sight of the woman, and when he turned back, she was gone.

Light made his excuses to the extremely concerned faces of his coworkers, and called himself a taxi. He needed to be home. He needed to be in the safety of his own house, where nothing could touch him. Where nothing could go wrong.

-

He awoke to Kiyomi shaking his shoulder.

“Light? Light?” Her voice… something was wrong. He opened his eyes.

“Kiyomi… what…”

“Light, I need you to drive me to the hospital. Something is… bad. I don’t know. But I need to get to the hospital.” She looked him straight in the eye. The sleep cleared from his mind instantly. She was only eight months. What if she had gone into premature labor?

He had to help her down the stairs, and he brought a towel for her to sit on in the car just in case.

He wouldn’t necessarily call what happened in the next few moments the longest drive of his life, but it was a damn long one. The headlights of other cars twinkled in his still-sleep-blurred eyes. He couldn’t concentrate quite right. It was like driving in a dream. He glanced at Kiyomi from time to time, but she barely moved, her face twisted in sickness and fear.

The emergency room wasn’t too crowded, but it still took longer than Light was happy with to get a doctor for Kiyomi. And once a doctor was available, they rushed Kiyomi away from him, and ushered him to a waiting room.

And there he waited, checking his watch, for two hours.

“Mr. Yagami,” the nurse greeted in a soothing tone when she finally returned. Something was very wrong. “I have some unfortunate news for you. The fetus isn’t viable, and won’t survive outside the womb. It’s also positioned in such a way that a natural birth is nearly impossible. Your wife has already requested a cesarean section to be performed as soon as possible, but we’ll need you to sign off on it as well.”

Light felt numb as he accepted the pile of papers, some to sign, some to fill out. _Failure._ Absolute failure. All of the hopes he had invested in this endeavor dashed. His left hand clenched and unclenched, over and over. His eyes blinked rhythmically. His teeth rubbed together so gently that it could barely be called grinding. His stomach twisted with nausea.

-

A day later, when he could finally look at the malformed face of his deceased offspring, all he felt was hatred. Hatred for everything it represented. Hatred for his joke of a marriage, hatred for Kiyomi, hatred for himself, hatred for whatever vengeful god was punishing him.

And hatred for Him, because in the back of his mind, he _knew_ that if he could’ve just been a _normal_ husband for Kiyomi, if he could’ve paid just a little closer attention, if he could’ve done _something_ right, then this wouldn’t have happened. If he hadn’t been so busy losing his sanity and pining for someone who cared nothing for him, he could’ve prevented this. But he didn’t.

Light had failed, and it was His fault.


End file.
